by Gaile Parkin
“And your country has delicious food, very spicy. In my country, especially along the coast, the cooking is still influenced by the people who came from India to build the railway many years ago.”
Mrs Mukherjee slapped both her hands on her thighs and declared, “I cook for you one day.”
“That will be wonderful. Thank you. But I’ve cooked for you today. Please have a cake.”
Mrs Mukherjee chose a cupcake with lilac icing, peeled away its paper cup and took a bite. Angel savoured the secret that—that very morning—a woman with HIV had stirred that cake mixture to get a feel for the correct consistency. To reveal that secret to Mrs Mukherjee would surely be to send her into a frenzy of panic and ticket-booking.
“Very tasty. Obviously you will bake the cake for my husband’s cousin-brother, no?” “Oh, is he visiting here?”
“Yes. He was in Butare, at the National University. Two-years contract is finishing in three months, but he was deciding to return back early.”
“So he’s on his way back home?”
“For the short visit. Now is time for me and my husband to go home, too. I told my husband no more contract.”
“How long have you been here, Mrs Mukherjee?”
“Almost three years. Three years! I told my husband if he is renewing contract I am taking the boys home to Delhi. Too much of germs are here.” Mrs Mukherjee finished her cupcake.
“Are there no germs in Delhi?”
“The Ebola is not there.” Mrs Mukherjee shook her head vehemently. “And no AIDS.”
Angel resisted the urge to polish her glasses again. Without saying a word, she picked up the plate of cupcakes and held them out to her guest, who took one iced in crimson and peeled away its paper case before continuing.
“And the servants in Delhi are better.”
“Are you not happy with Miremba?”
“She isn’t knowing good English. Now the boys are speaking bad English. But what to do?” Mrs Mukherjee raised both her arms into the air again. “Rwandans are not speaking much of English.”
Mrs Mukherjee was clearly unaware that the reason why Miremba spoke English at all was that she had been raised in Uganda, the country where Ebola was even now killing people in two weeks. Angel must remember to warn Miremba never to reveal this fact to her employers. It was time to move the conversation on.
“So, Mrs Mukherjee, tell me about the cake that you want to order for your husband’s … er … cousin-brother, is it? Will you be having a party to say farewell to him?”
“Yes. Most of the Indian community here will come.”
“And this cousin-brother’s family? Have they been here with him in Butare?”
“No, no. The family is at home in India. He married after already coming here. His parents found a nice girl for him. He went home for marriage and immediately he impregnated his wife. Very successful honeymoon. Very successful. Now he’s going to meet his son at home.”
“Eh, that is something nice for him to look forward to!”
“Yes. Obviously he will try to impregnate again before going for his new job in England.”
“So his family will not go with him to England?”
“No.”
“Does his wife not mind being left alone to raise his children?”
“No, no. His wife is with the parents. She married well, an educated man. No complaints.”
“And you also married an educated man, Mrs Mukherjee. But you came here with him.”
“The boys are older. If they are babies, no. The wife cannot accompany the husband with babies. Better to stay home with the parents.”
Better for the husband, certainly, thought Angel. It was very convenient for him simply to be away for that whole period of sleepless nights and soiling. Angel had herself not accompanied her husband when he went to Germany for his studies, though the children were no longer babies then. When Pius had first gone to do his Master’s degree, Joseph had been eight and Vinas six. After his Master’s, Pius had been awarded another scholarship to do a PhD, so when he finally came home, his children were already fourteen and twelve. Of course, he had come home once a year during that time, and once a year Angel had been able to visit him there, leaving Joseph and Vinas in the care of her parents.
Angel had often wondered about the effect on the children of their father’s long absence. It had certainly made it easier, she felt, for both of them to choose to live far away from their parents: Joseph in Mwanza, where he had an important job as the manager of a factory that manufactured packaging for Lake Victoria’s fishing industry; and Vinas in Arusha, where she taught English. It had probably also influenced Vinas’s love for Winston: it was not unknown for girls who missed their fathers to marry men who were older. And perhaps, Angel acknowledged, her own absences during her annual visits to Pius in Germany had helped to prepare the ground for the distance that had come between her and Vinas.
“And what was your husband’s cousin-brother doing at the National University, Mrs Mukherjee?”
“Also computer, just like my husband. All men in my husband’s family are doing computer.”
“I believe India is an expert country for that.”
“Yes. Now Rwanda is wanting to become the expert country, too. The government of Britain is helping for that—but the power here is on-off, on-off, not like in India. No power outages in India.”
“I have an idea, Mrs Mukherjee. Because most of the Indian community will attend this farewell party, and because India is an expert country in computers and your husband’s cousin-brother is himself an expert in computers, perhaps the cake should look like a computer keyboard?”
Mrs Mukherjee thought about this idea while Angel looked for a page in her photo album.
“I have never made a keyboard cake before, so it will be unique for your husband’s cousin-brother. But here are some other cakes that I’ve made to look like things. This one here is a dump truck, and this one’s a cell-phone, and here’s a micro phone, and an aeroplane. I’ve also made one that looks like a pile of 5,000-franc notes, but that photo is not yet printed.”
Mrs Mukherjee examined the photos carefully. “Computer keyboard,” she said. Then she looked at Angel and said, “Good idea, Mrs Tungaraza. The cake will be computer keyboard.”
“Good!” declared Angel, and for the next few minutes they busied themselves with the Cake Order Form. Angel began by quoting an exorbitant price, knowing that Mrs Mukherjee would insist on negotiating it down. The final price was only slightly lower than what she had hoped to get away with, and since it was substantially lower than the price she had originally quoted to Mrs Mukherjee, both women were happy with the deal. They sat back to finish their tea.
“Tell me, Mrs Mukherjee,” began Angel. “I’m busy organising bride-price for Leocadie who works in the shop in our street. By the way, I’ll be coming to each and every family in the street about that soon. But for now I’m very interested to ask about bride-price in your country. I’ve heard that in India it’s the girl’s parents who must pay bride-price to the boy’s parents.”
“Yes. Dowry. My parents were giving to my husband’s parents the fridge, the freezer, the motor-car. All new; nothing second-hand. Also jewels; many, many jewels. My husband is an educated man, so there were many gifts.”
“Eh! Here it is different. The boy’s parents must give bride-price to the girl’s parents. Pius’s parents gave my parents eight cows. Eight! But they would have taken six. Pius was already close to getting his degree when we married, and he was going to become a teacher. In those days there were not very many boys from Bukoba who were getting degrees at Makerere University in Uganda.” Angel stopped speaking suddenly and looked anxiously at her guest. “Of course, there was no Ebola in Uganda then, Mrs Mukherjee. My parents knew that it was a good marriage for me.”
“Good marriage,” agreed Mrs Mukherjee. “The girl in the shop is not yet married?”
“Leocadie? No. But she’ll marry soon.”
/> “What about the baby?”
“It’s the father of the baby that she’ll marry.”
Mrs Mukherjee shook her head and raised both her arms in the air. “Baby before marriage is bringing shame to the family!” she declared. “In India, there is no marriage for girls with babies. Those girls are no good.”
“But sometimes a man wants to be sure that a girl is fertile and can deliver a healthy baby. He doesn’t want to find out after he’s already paid bride-price and married a girl that she cannot deliver. And if a girl has already delivered a healthy baby to a man, then her family can negotiate for more cows.”
Mrs Mukherjee shook her head. “No. No good.”
Angel recognised that it was going to be difficult to persuade Mrs Mukherjee to contribute any money to the wedding of Leocadie and Modeste. She would have to try her luck with Mr Mukherjee.
Getting up and walking towards the window, she said, “Shall we call the boys up for some cake?”
AS the Tungarazas ate their supper that night, Angel surprised everyone by declaring that she had decided that she wanted to learn some French.
“Why?” asked Pius. “We can manage fine here with Swahili and English.”
“But when I’m with somebody who doesn’t know Swahili or English, then we can’t talk. Like Agathe from the hairdresser’s. All we can do is smile and nod at each other and then somebody else must be there for us to talk to each other through that person. And today at Jenna’s, everybody there knew French except me.”
The passage of a forkful of steamed matoke from Pius’s plate to his mouth was interrupted long enough for him to say, “But Jenna could translate for you.”
“Yes. But there won’t always be someone there to translate for me. I can’t take such a person with me wherever I go.”
“I hope you don’t want to go for evening classes,” said Pius.
“No, of course not.”
“And a private teacher during the day would be expensive.”
“Yes, I know.”
“We can teach you, Mama,” said Faith. “We’re learning French at school. You can look at our books and we can explain everything to you.”
“Eh, that is a very good idea, Faith, thank you.”
It was exactly what Faith’s mother would have said, and although Angel would have preferred for Vinas herself to be there saying it, it was exactly what she had hoped to hear.
AS ANGEL SAT in the unfamiliar living room sipping at a cup of tea made the bland, English way, she prayed silently for forgiveness. There were a number of things for which she hoped to be forgiven. Above all, it was a Sunday morning, and on a Sunday morning she should, of course, be in church with her family. Today her family had gone to a Pentecostal service in the big blue-and-white-striped tent that was home to the Christian Life Assembly church. Right now they would be singing hymns and praising the Lord, while Angel was sitting here, in this house that she did not know, aiding and abetting a deception. Well, three deceptions, really—one of which might possibly cancel out the sin of the second, though she was not entirely sure about that. First, while not actually lying to Jenna’s husband, she had participated in allowing him to believe that, this morning, his wife would be safely at Saint Michael’s Catholic Church—near the American Embassy—with the Tungaraza family; and yet, here was Jenna in this unfamiliar living room with Angel and two strangers instead. But perhaps it was not wrong to lie to the CIA about his wife being at church, because he himself was lying to his wife and was—in all probability—lying in bed with his neighbour Linda at this very moment. Of course, by providing somewhere else for his wife to be, Angel was aiding that deception; and that was the second reason why she needed forgiving—although deceiving a deceiver was perhaps not so much of a sin. Third, there was the extremely troubling matter for which Angel asked forgiveness every Sunday: the matter of not telling Jenna about her husband’s infidelity—although Angel felt sure that if she were to tell Jenna, that would also be something for which she would need to ask forgiveness. It was a very complicated situation indeed.
So Angel prayed for forgiveness; but prayer was also a time to give thanks, and she gave silent thanks now for a number of things as she took another sip of the rather insipid tea. As always, she was grateful for a new customer—in this case Kwame, the man in whose living room she now sat. A few days earlier, Pius’s Ghanaian colleague Dr Sembene had come to see Angel to order a cake on behalf of Kwame, who would be hosting a small gathering that Sunday afternoon. Kwame’s wife, Akosua, would be visiting from Accra, and a number of Ghanaians would be coming to greet her and to hear news from home. Of course, Angel had tried to get as much information as possible about Akosua from Dr Sembene in order to design the perfect cake for her—but, never having actually met Akosua, Dr Sembene was able to tell Angel only one fact about her. That had meant three things: that the cake that Angel had brought with her this morning, while both colourful and much-admired, was rather non-specific; that Angel and Jenna would have to pretend to be going to church while spending time with Kwame and Akosua instead; and that Angel had another reason to give thanks. Yes, the one piece of information that Dr Sembene had been able to give Angel was very important indeed: Akosua was a trainer of literacy teachers.
Jenna and Akosua were so caught up in their conversation that they had not noticed when Kwame’s cell-phone had rung and he had stepped out into the garden—filled with colourful frangipanis and canna lilies—to take the call, apologising to Angel for interrupting their conversation. Kwame had been telling her about his work as an investigator for the trials that were taking place in Arusha, in Angel’s country. The suspects awaiting trial there were accused of planning and leading the killings in Rwanda, and Kwame was part of the international team that was gathering evidence and witnesses against them.
Angel put down her cup of tea and reached down to the ground for the plastic bag at her feet. It contained two more reasons to give thanks. Akosua had brought with her from Accra a large number of lengths of beautiful cloth to sell, produced by a group of women who supported themselves by buying cheap cotton fabric, dyeing it, then printing special designs and patterns on it before selling it for a healthy profit. Akosua had told her that each of the patterns had a special meaning, and that in the past only men had been allowed to use those patterns, always printing them in black on a limited range of colours. What the group of women was doing was both traditional and modern.
Angel fingered and admired the two lengths that she had bought. The fabric of one was a light orange colour, printed in bright yellow and gold with a design that was about people cooperating with one another and depending on one another. Akosua had told her what that pattern said: Help me and let me help you. This was the cloth that would become her dress for Leocadie’s wedding to Modeste.
“You have chosen two beautiful pieces,” said Kwame, who had come in from the garden and was easing himself back into the chair across from Angel.
“Eh, but it was difficult to choose! They’re all so beautiful. At first I wanted to choose that green one, because Akosua told me that the pattern on there said: What I hear, I keep. I like that, because I’m a professional somebody and I know about confidentiality. But I’m sure you know about that in your work, too.”
“Absolutely. No witness wants to come forward without some kind of guarantee of confidentiality. But it’s very difficult here, because if somebody sees somebody talking to me, then automatically they assume that that person has revealed something to me about somebody else, and then there can be threats of reprisals. Although, of course, many people feel more comfortable talking to an investigator who belongs to neither this group nor that. Still, confidentiality remains a very big problem. By the way, if you had taken that green piece with the confidentiality pattern, it would have given you two very different outfits. Those pieces you have chosen are quite similar.”
“Yes. But as soon as Akosua explained this other one to me, I knew I had to have it.” Angel
indicated the second of her two pieces, a pale lemon yellow printed with gold and bright orange. “This pattern talks about reconciling and making peace. As soon as I heard that, I knew that I must buy it for a special wedding dress, and then I must have this other one that is like it, rather than the green one, because I’m going to be the bride’s mother at that wedding.”
“Oh, your daughter is getting married? Congratulations.”
“Thank you, Kwame. She’s not my daughter; my daughter is unfortunately late. But I’m the bride’s mother for the wedding. It will be a special wedding, an example of this reconciliation that everybody is talking about here.”
Kwame shook his head sadly. “Oh, Angel, that is a wedding that I need to witness! My job makes it very difficult for me to believe in reconciliation, even though I fully want to believe in it. I need to believe in it.” Kwame glanced towards his wife, who was talking animatedly with Jenna, and lowered his voice a little. “I was here before, you know.”
“Before?”
“In 1994. I was one of the UN blue berets. Our job was to keep the peace, but of course there was no peace to keep. And we had no mandate to create peace by preventing or stopping the killing because we could not use force. In effect, we were here simply as witnesses. That’s why I’ve come back here now to do this job. I want to find a way to put things right, to contribute, to make up for my powerlessness, my uselessness before. I feel for these witnesses. I know that their silence might protect them from harm by others, but it can also destroy them from the inside. The counsellor who helped me afterwards told me that sometimes you need to dig deep into a wound to remove all the poison before it can heal. These people need to tell what happened; they need to get it all out. Of course it wasn’t my own people’s slaughter, my own family’s slaughter, that I witnessed—so there’s no way I can claim that I was a witness in the same way that these people were.” Again Kwame glanced towards Akosua to make sure that she was not listening. “Actually, I’ve never told my wife about the things I witnessed here.”